Bradbury has been running the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel without Senate confirmation for more than two years, during which the Senate allowed several nominations to expire, the Times said.

It emerged in October that Bradbury had authored several memos approving such terror suspect interrogation techniques as head slapping, exposure to cold and simulated drowning. Democrats urged the White House to withdraw his name from consideration permanently.

Joe Shoemaker, a spokesman for Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the second-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate, said the nomination was a political insult.

"The president has thumbed his nose at Congress and chosen an individual who has been involved in authorizing some of the most controversial policies of this administration," Shoemaker told the Times.

Durbin sits on the Judiciary Committee, which would have to approve the nomination.